The supporting-actress and supporting-actor nominations for Karolina Wydra and Carlos-Manuel Vesga aren’t just two of the most deserved honors of this Emmy season; they’re also plaudits for two performances that embody how gloriously odd and thought-provoking “Pluribus” is. While Wydra may be the first person nominated for playing 8 billion people at once, Vesga is one of only a handful of actors to be nominated for playing a nearly silent role.

“The show fulfills every role that you would expect from a TV series,” Vesga said. “But also it really goes beyond entertainment and starts to walk the territory of art, which is a different thing from entertainment. Art is about presenting the audiences with different angles on human existence. Hopefully, those new angles and perspectives are going to invite audiences to question their own existence and maybe better that existence.”

Wydra’s Zosia and Vesga’s Manousos sit on opposite sides of the moral dilemma that plays across Vince Gilligan’s Apple TV drama. “Pluribus” starts with a virus that quickly spreads across Earth, infecting all of humanity in hours and turning most of the world into a connected hive mind. The only people not controlled by
“the Joining” are a handful of survivors who are immune to this virus as well as to the Others’ control. Rhea Seehorn’s Carol is a rare survivor, a romance author who resents her fans, is mourning the death of her wife and is now one of the last remaining defenders of what’s left of human free will.

Most of the conversations about the importance of that autonomy happen between Carol and Zosia, a member of the Others who serves as Carol’s chaperone and eventually her love interest. As Zosia argues that the Joining has eliminated racism, mass pollution and poverty from the world, Carol argues that everything worthwhile about being a person — aspects like love, passion, art, family and friendship — relies on people having their own thoughts and opinions.

“I feel so incredibly grateful to be part of something that makes people talk and makes people sit and actually be present,” Wydra said. “[The show] pressures you to have the conversations about what it means or what resonates with you.”

To construct the role of Zosia, Wydra worked closely with Gilligan and the rest of the “Pluribus” team to determine how exactly a hive mind of 8 billion connected people works. While Zosia does experience emotions like happiness, anger and grief, they’re all felt as if they’re a faded memory. That distant politeness is crucial to how Wydra portrays Zosia.

“You can compare it on some level — and I’m not saying that that’s what Vince had in mind — but definitely to AI,” Wydra said. “They don’t have the same emotional consciousness on some level that a normal human being does, but they can perform everything and anything to the best of their ability — actually at the best of all humanity.”

In contrast, Vesga’s Manousos, another of the few immune survivors, spends most of Season 1 refusing help from the Others and cutting himself off from the rest of the world.

Heading into “Pluribus,” Vesga knew only that Manousos was an immigrant who had moved from Colombia to Paraguay. That detail was all he needed to conceive a deeply complicated character.

“It does inform the way he approaches the Joining,” he said. “The fact is that this guy had to leave his home country and lose his roots, his identity, his loved ones, probably, to try to build a new world for himself in a different country. That’s why he’s so black and white about [the Joining]. He knows what loss is, and he knows what losing one’s identity is.”

As the season progresses, Manousos’ role becomes a far more physical one, especially once he decides to find Carol without relying on the Others. But for Vesga, it wasn’t traversing the notoriously dangerous Darién Gap on the border of Colombia and Panama that was most difficult. Far more challenging were Manousos’ quieter scenes in his office, moments when Vesga had to construct and communicate his character’s entire personality while barely saying a word.

“His inner world and his inner tensions, for me, were the most important part,” he said. When Manousos did talk, Vesga worked closely with the directors and producers to ensure that the meaning of his words transcended his short lines. “How do you express through a line like ‘Today is Monday’ the stress, anguish, pain and physical pain — everything that this guy is going through?” he said. “Though those lines seem disconnected from the emotion and state he’s in, I would have to use them to complete the whole picture.”

This story first ran in the Down to the Wire Drama issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.

EXCLUSIVE: Monarch Media has enlisted Kali Bailey to adapt the screenplay for The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, a live-action feature adaptation of the children’s book by L. Frank Baum.

First published in 1902, Baum’s book follows Santa Claus from an abandoned baby in a magical forest near Oz, to his beloved role of spreading peace, love and lots of toys at Christmastime. Recognized as one of the greatest fantasy writers of the 20th century, Baum is best known for his 14-book series, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which of course inspired the 1939 film classic The Wizard of Oz.

Monarch principals Steve Barnett, Alan Powell and Vicky Patel will produce the new movie.

This isn’t Bailey’s first time working with the Monarch Media team, having co-written the company’s coming-of-age film A Week Away, which spawned the Angel Network series of the same name. She went on to co-direct multiple episodes of the spinoff series and also wrote and directed the Angel Network sci-fi film The Lightning Code.

Speaking to the origins of the Life and Adventures movie, Monarch’s Barnett said: “I’ve been obsessed with the origins of Santa Claus for a long time, so discovering that the incredible L. Frank Baum had explored that backstory was really exciting. Santa is one of the few fictional, global icons, and this story taps into that shared mythology. Kali has created a sweeping, four-quadrant adventure that feels timeless yet fresh—a big, emotional ride that will connect with everyone around the world, across cultures and generations.”

Monarch’s credits include producing the Richard Linklater film Hit Man, starring Glen Powell, and the animated feature Tangles, starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Bryan Cranston, Seth Rogen and others, which premiered to critical acclaim at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Their comedy Babies, directed by Lauren Miller Rogen, and starring Seth Rogen, Anna Kendrick, David Strathairn, Sharon Stone, Ed Helms and Issa Rae, is slated to premiere at the upcoming Toronto Film Festival and will be released theatrically this fall.

Monarch is also producing an untitled Nick Jonas holiday rom-com for Netflix, to be directed by Ari Sandal, and is currently prepping a remake of coming-of-age film A Walk to Remember.

Bailey is repped by First Story Entertainment and attorney Joshua Lastine of Lastine Entertainment Law.

Zach Roberts still remembers seeing 1998’s “The Mask of Zorro” for the first time as a child. As he watched the film’s daring stunts and swashbuckling action, he realized that his ambition was to do that.

“I guess I just never really let that go,” Roberts said. “At school, I went to a careers evening and they said, ‘What do you want to do?’ I said I wanted to be a stuntman and they said, ‘Go join the Army or become a bricklayer. It’s never going to happen.’”

But happen it did. Roughly 30 years later, Roberts picked up his first Emmy nomination for Outstanding Stunt Performance, alongside Gyula Tóth, Chris Cox and Jake Cox, for “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.” They’ve been recognized for the fifth episode of HBO’s “Game of Thrones” prequel, which includes a massive seven-on-seven skirmish led by Ser Duncan “Dunk” the Tall (Peter Claffey) on one side and Prince Aerion Targaryen (Finn Bennett) on the other.

The sequence is bloody and brutal, filled with flying weapons, rogue horses
and intricate choreography. Roberts took over as Aerion from the moment the
prince dons his ostentatious headgear: “As soon as the helmet went down, that
was all me,” he said. The four-man team (plus 10 riders for the jousts) worked
closely with stunt coordinator Florian Robin and second-unit director Rob
Inch for a sequence that took around 10 days to shoot, after heavy rehearsals.

“When we got there on the day, they really knew the target for each day, and it meant we had freedom,” Roberts said. “Where can we push a little bit to get those elements that are the magic?”

Though the arena was built for a dry fight, Roberts said “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” creator Ira Parker pushed for the brawl to take place in mud. It added an element of chaos and grounded the sequence, but it also made things heavier, slower and more slippery.

At the same time, Roberts had to work while wearing his character’s intricate armor. As a nobleman of the realm, Aerion sports spike-covered shoulders and a helmet modeled after his own face. But the helmet lacked peripheral vision and limited Roberts’ visibility, while the shoulders created their own challenges.

“What can look amazing can impede us,” he noted. “Originally, a lot of the spikes were metal. Smashing into somebody or falling, you’re on metal spikes, so then you have to negotiate: Is there any way we can rubberize them or cut them to make them safer, so we can have that amazing look without it actually being a danger?”

In the end, the spikes were rubberized. But Roberts still had Aerion’s long, flowing cape to contend with. “We fought to have that cut down,” he said. “If you remember ‘The Incredibles’ when Edna Mode says, ‘No capes!’—there is a really strong reason why. I might try and run forward and a horse stands on it.

The negotiations, Roberts said, are at the heart of a stunt performer’s career—looking at every variable to find the best way to safely render action on screen. With Roberts now serving as the assistant coordinator on Season 2, it’s safe to say his childhood swashbuckling dreams have been realized.

“A lot of people think that stuntmen are crazy or take all these risks, but it’s actually very calculated because it needs to be repeatable,” he said. “So you just learn the parameters. How have we made everything safe? If we communicate well, we’re limiting the chance of risk or something happening, knowing that it is possible. It’s not that you don’t feel alive or on the edge in those moments. You just get into the zone where you feel everything happening.”

This story first appeared in the Down to the Wire: Drama issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.